Date: 15/06/2017
Author’s Note: A short snippet (722 words) written for the prompt ‘I see the assassins have failed’. I had no characters in mind and unlike most of my other snippets, it’s not from an actual story.

I See The Assassins Have Failed

There was a crash, a clamour from the floor below. It was loud enough to wake the occupant of the cluttered shoe-box bedroom on the first floor. Even if it hadn’t been, then the obnoxious yelling which preceded it was sure to. Burning eyes flickered to the paper thin curtains that did nothing to keep out the sun before travelling to the battered door a pace from the foot of the bed. The muffled swearing had turned to screaming and the bed-dweller knew that now was probably a good time to get up before the situation escalated any further.

Ripping back the worn sheets covering one of her bare legs, the woman rolled out of her pit and into a standing…hunching position. Without giving a care for her lack of clothing or the fact her hair was poking out in every direction, she unlocked the latch, opened the barrier and walked out into the hallway.

The shaded air wasn’t as heavy as in her room. The cool floor would have been a relief for her feet which had gained blistered some five hours earlier if it was not for the fact the scanty carpet was balding in patches. It also had a weird itch to it. Walking down the narrow corridor, she listened for signs of life as she passed the four other doors she shared the floor with. It was as quiet as a mouse – besides the shrieking growing more aggressive and another wave of crashing from the floor below. Turning to her left, the woman took on the marginal stairwell, each step creaking underfoot as she skipped downwards. Turning left again at the bottom, the reception desk in the restricted foyer was unmanned. Following the voice which had woken her down the narrow passage, she came to the kitchen door.

It was a mess. The room was filled with cardboard boxes so much so that she couldn’t even see the man disrupting the whole building. There were sheets upon sheets of bubble-wrap and countless balls of newspaper. It was glorious.

Skipping down the single concrete step and striding over one of the smaller cardboard boxes packed into the farmhouse style kitchen, the woman dodged and squeezed around the obstruction until she was between the fridge and the counter by the window. Opening the freezer door, she pulled a bottle of vodka from the small upper compartment with one hand as the other poured a cup of coffee from the percolator. “Good morning~” Her voice cooed above the rustling and cursing coming from the other side of the mountain of boxes and waves of bubble-wrap.

Head shooting up, a pair of wild eyes glared through the gap between what was starting to look like a shoddily built fort. “I see the assassins have failed.” The man disappeared and his voice strained. “Again.”

Eyes on her task, the woman poured out a four-finger shot of vodka into her coffee. “Oh, honey, stop ordering off the discount menu if you want me dead so badly.”

Kicking over a stack of boxes while flapping his arms aggressively, the man was now visible. He was still up to his waist in a sea of the apparently never ending torture, and covered in flour. Glowering at the woman smirking into her cup, the slightly older man gripped the sides of his askew white-dusted hair and bit the air with each syllable. “This was you, wasn’t it? I know it was you.” He slapped one of the boxes in her direction, but she merely side-stepped out of the way of the projectile.

Purposely sticking her pinky out as she drank her breakfast, the woman grinned. Cup in one hand and vodka bottle in the other, the woman jumped over the low obstacle she had passed on the way in. “I bet you didn’t imagine this when I said you’d be balls deep this Saturday, did you?” Skipping up the single step leading to the hallway, she held up the index and middle finger of the hand holding the bottle and gave them a wave as she pranced away.

Grabbing the stacks either side of him, the man ragged them in a fit. Kicking the burrow he had somehow made, he went red in the face as he screamed at the woman’s back. “ you, you spiteful !”